The world's first single-use cup is to be displayed by the British Museum, as the curator says it is "not invention of modern consumerist society". A 3,500-year-old vessel, which once contained wine, was made by the Minoans, one of the first advanced civilisations in Europe. It will go on display later this month as part of a new exhibition called "Rubbish And Us" at the British Museum. "People may be very surprised to know that disposable, single-use cups are not the invention of our modern consumerist society, but in fact can be traced back thousands of years," said Julia Farley, who is a curator at the British Museum. "The elite were showing off their wealth and status by throwing these great big parties, feasts and festivals. People were getting together in large groups and much like today, nobody wants to do the washing up." Minoans gathered at the palace for parties, feasts and gatherings such as bull-leaping festivals – a "more risky" version of "hurdles". Thousands of the handleless, conical clay cups have been discovered on archeological sites on the island of Crete and at the palace Knossos. The civilisation is thought to have collapsed after the Minoans rapidly exhausted resources on the small island and because of a then "natural fluctuation" of climate change. The 3,500-year-old vessel, which once contained wine, was made by the Minoans As well as being convenient, the cup was a means of showing off wealth because of all the resources poured into making it. The British Museum has come under pressure over environment-related issues including over its sponsorship deal with the oil giant BP, which has been the museum’s corporate partner since 1996 and its current deal runs until 2023. Ms Farley said she hoped the display would make visitors think creatively about reducing waste, instead of just feeling guilty. "Human beings have always produced rubbish. Making some rubbish is an unavoidable by-product of being human." she said. "We are tool-using animals. We wear clothes. Nothing lasts forever. It's in the very nature of our existence that we make rubbish." But she said: "This is a sobering message about scale and consumption and I think we need to find that balance, which humans have never been very good at finding." The ancient cup will be shown alongside a waxed paper cup from the early 1990s, made at around the same time modern disposable cups were taking off. Other objects will include a yellow fishing basket made from plastic wrapping and photographs from across the Pacific, showing the extent of the plastic problem. An ancient disposable cup, next to plastic items washed up on a Pacific beach "We have thousands of these Minoan, disposable cups and that's a lot. But today we are making over 300 billion papers cups globally every year," Ms Farley said. "The Minoan civilisation is tiny compared to the global consumerist economy that we have now. Now we are doing what human beings have always done but we are doing it on an unprecedented scale with materials that are going to take hundreds, if not thousands of years, to biodegrade. "We think of ancient people being in touch with their environment but if you cut down trees to make charcoal and burn it to fire clay that's releasing a lot of carbon dioxide." The Museum said it is "striving to lessen its environmental impact", with all waste being either recycled or burned and converted to electricity. Over 90 per cent of the display materials, such as plinths and cases, in the exhibition have been repurposed and recycled from the British Museum's recent Manga exhibition.
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A painting found stashed inside a wall at an Italian museum has been confirmed as the stolen “Portrait of a Lady” by Austria’s Gustav Klimt, prosecutors said on Friday, two decades after the artwork went missing. The century-old painting was discovered concealed in an external wall by gardeners at the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art in Piacenza, northeast Italy, last month. “It is with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic,” prosecutor Ornella Chicca told reporters.
Directors of an Italian museum are optimistic that a painting found hidden in a wall this week is a Gustav Klimt work stolen two decades ago, a director said on Thursday. Preliminary indications appear that the painting of a woman found by gardeners on Tuesday inside an external wall on the museum’s grounds could indeed by the “Portrait of a Woman” painted by the Austrian artist in 1916-1917. “What interests us the most is whether it’s the original or not, rather than the theft investigation,” said Massimo Ferrari, president of the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art, a museum in Piacenza, in northwest Italy.
